20kN

The Swift 3 is possibly the best beginner WS ever made or at least the best I know about anyway. It's a fantastic suit with tons of range and power for its size. Without question it's worlds better than a Funk 1. The Gus and Funk are delta wing designs intended for acro which are naturally pretty slow. Someone in a Swift 3 could outfly someone in a Funk 1 (or a Funk 3 for that matter). I've flown with Carves, Funks, and other deltas in my Swift 3 and I often have to depower my S3 to stay with them.

Well, there are AADs out there that do not require any maintenance for 15 years, so...

I bought from them several times. They have been great. I had a shipment that was delayed big time due to stupidness on the manufacturer's part and Scrisc tried to set it right by sending me some free stuff even though it was not their fault. Scrisc is the only company that I personally know of that allows you to buy canopes, rigs, ect. and not pay full price up front. They collect a deposit and dont require full payment until the item is made.

I've been flying WS for the last 230 jumps or so. It's pretty much all I do at this point now. I started out with a S3 then moved on to an ATC. I am comfortable backflying, doing basic transisions and general all-around flying with my ATC. I've tried some front and back flips (more for stability recovery than to actually nail them). I've put myself into intentional, controlled flatspins and lots of quadruple barrel rolls for instability recovery practice. Overall I feel comfortable at a basic level in all aspects of basic flight in my ATC. As such, I was considering getting a Freak 3 but I wanted to know how much of a step up it is from the ATC. Are we talking a bit faster, or significantly faster with significantly more skill required to fly it? Visually it does not look much larger than the ATC when you lay one over the other, but I also know that there is a bit more to the science than just surface area.

I have about 100 jumps on a Pilot 7 and it pretty much always opens soft and snively. Too snively for a WS canopy sometimes honestly. I mean yea, you can put a larger slider on. But that can cause issues in itself. You might have a cutaway from a hung-up slider if you go too overboard. Also, putting on a massive slider does not guarantee you wont have a hard opening. Consider very small canopies. They have sliders a half to a third the size of larger, student canopies, yet there are plenty of people who have had hard openings on 210s, 230s, ect while their friends flying 90s and whatever are not having issues. Tandem canopies have massive sliders and again they can open hard on occasion too. Also know that slider shape, size and the like are not the only things that affect how hard the canopy opens. Brake setting have an effect and even the upper control lines can change how hard the canopy opens if you change the length of them. Even relatively small changes can have a noticeable impact. Canopy trim plays a role as well. Dacron is a bit more elastic than other types of lines, but it also goes out of trim which causes its own problems (including possible hard openings). I'd say if you're really worried you could get a Safire 2. That's one canopy I have never heard of a single person ever having a hard opening on (although I am sure it's probably happened at some point).

No, it is not common for a manufacturer to sell you a brand new reserve that is 10 years old. Was it sold as brand new with no discount? Any canopy sold by any manufacturer would normally be manufactured in the current year unless stated otherwise.

That is the intended function of all the semi-stowless bags that I have ever seen. The reason why those tabs exist is so that you can insert the lines in. You then need to close it so that the lines remain contained and pull out in an orderly fashion. If the tabs opened all the time, there is risk that all the lines could just dump out all at once (which is called line dump), and that is unsafe. If you're finding that the tabs are open when you reach the ground, something is wrong and you need to get that looked at by a rigger. I have 550 jumps on a semi-stowless system and never once have the tabs been open when I landed, not even one side.

For the cost of resizing the harness on a container I think you'd find better value in buying a brand new container built for you. Then you can get all the options and colors you want with a perfect fit.

I dont work in skydiving HR so I cant speak from direct experience, but my guess would be that they don't want to be bothered with the extra work. It's a lot easier to hire a US citizen than a non-resident alien. It's not as simple as just sponsoring you over. It's more involved than that and many work visa requests are denied. The US government would prefer US jobs go to US citizens and so there are limitations of issuance on work visas and many people do not qualify for one.

Here is a video of a guy having a chop on a Storm after a WS jump:

When I colored my lines I only colored the attachment point webbing that extends beyond the bar tack. If you look at the attachment point you'll see that the canopy manufacturer does not usually trim the webbing right at the bar tack that connects it to the canopy. Usually there is about 10mm of material that extends beyond the bar tack. I color that material because it is not load bearing.

If the Strix is similar to the ATC then I am wondering why Squirrel calls for 70 WS jumps for the ATC but Phoenix Fly wants you to have 200 WS jumps to fly the Strix. I have my own theory as to why this is, but I am curious what others say.

Ron Bell talks about the new AAD BSR here: https://www.skydive-tv.com/pia-symposium-2019-ron-bell/ Also, UPT mentions it around 4:50 here: https://www.skydive-tv.com/pia-symposium-2019-tom-noonan-upt/

Facebook. There are tons of groups with thousands of items.

Ron Bell talks about the new AAD BSR here: https://www.skydive-tv.com/pia-symposium-2019-ron-bell/ UPT talks a bit about it here as well (4:55): https://www.skydive-tv.com/pia-symposium-2019-tom-noonan-upt/ These USPA conspiracy theories are getting a bit ridiculous. Tabulating statistical data on incidents is a core function of improving safety in every single industry in existence. There are people who's entire careers are solely to run statics on incidents and determine outcomes--it is in itself a career field. Many of the safety improvements that have occurred to products and practices over the years have come directly from analyzing statistical data obtained from incident reports. Detailed and comprehensive reports allow people to better understand legitimate, real-world risks and their applicability to certain situations and conditions. Likewise, a complete lack of reporting leaves little more than random guessing which will never further the advancement of anything.

You can set the backlight on the X2 to stay on all the time if you want. The manufacturer has it disabled by default because the backlight will eat up battery life quickly.

Not necessarily. I colored my attachment points on my first canopy and I used the colored attachment points for my first 500 jumps. It was not until I had my D license that I packed a canopy without colored attachment points (it was a demo), and I found it to be just as easy as a canopy with the colored attachment points. At that point I had enough pack jobs that I was not even really paying attention to the colors much anymore. However, the colored attachment points helped big time when I was learning to pack. It made the process easier and if I had to start over again I'd 100% be down for using colored attachment points. It's useful when you're new.

I own an X2 and use it on every jump. Currently there is not really anyway to export and view GPS data. The most you get is GPS navigation while in flight. It will give you an arrow and a distance indicator (in mi or km) pointing to the DZ while the device is in wingsuit mode. This is in case you get lost in the air or whatever. I have not used a Dekunu but I've seen them on the plane many times. They dont look attractive to me in that they seem to have a quite short battery life and there is way too much info on the screen. It's too complex and convoluted. The X2 is much more simple in that regard. If you want to actually analyze your flight you're going to need a FlySight or other portable GPS. The X2 is really just an altimeter that is supplemented by limited GPS info to tell you what direction you're going, how fast and how far away you are from the DZ. Regardless of which device you get, expect to charge it every day you jump. The Bluetooth and GPS functionality eats up a ton of battery life. I can only get about three full days of jumping out of my X2 before I'm around 20% battery. They claim they intend to reprogram the Bluetooth module in the future to reduce battery consumption, but regardless you'll need to charge it regularly. Also know that the X2 is still extremely new and there are only a few hundred units in existence. This means that the device is receiving regular software updates (nearly bi-weekly at the moment) and the software will probably change a lot over the coming year.

I've used colored permanent markers to color the line attachment points. It's unlikely using a marker on your canopy will cause it to fail. Rock climbers use permanent markers to mark nylon climbing ropes all the time and that's been a practice for decades already. Anyway, what I did was I only colored the attachment point fabric that extends beyond the bar tack. So then even if there was some effect, it would not matter because the marker was not used on any load bearing fabric.

I don't know why this is still a debate. The manufacturers are nearly in universal agreement--double stow. Virtually every manufacturer out there says this. By contrast, I don't know of even one major manufacturer who currently recommends against double stowing rubber bands. Bag strip is a very serious malfunction and if it happens to you there is a legitimate chance you could die from the resulting hard opening. Double stowing is explicitly intended to prevent a bag strip malfunction and it is more effective at doing it than other forms of stowing. At the bare minimum, if you dont double stow you should be able to easily lift your bag off the ground by the lines without them falling off. If you cannot do that, you need to use a different stow method that provides greater stow tension. One of the problems that makes single stowing seem attractive is that the problem that is created with single stowing does not immediately manifest itself. You could go thousands of jumps without ever having a problem. But one day out of nowhere the physics align and you get slammed like you just got into a car accident at 120 MPH. That would be the bag stripping off the parachute causing premature inflation because your locking stows were too lose.

There is not too much point in going from a Sabre 2 to a Pilot. They are both 9-cell canopies and while the Pilot is a bit more docile than the S2, it's still a fairly lateral move. You'd be much better off buying a Pilot 7 if you're getting into WS. I own a P7 and it works very well with WS. If you bought a P7 187 in ZPX, it should pack around the size of a Sabre 2 170. The fact that it is 7 cell knocks off about half of a size by itself and the ZPX knocks off at least another half size. Also know that Aerodyne does make the P7 in Ultra LPV as well, but that might actually be too small for your container. Ultra LPV is around two sizes smaller.

They seem to be a lot more common than one would think. Cypress' website says ' The first life saved by a CYPRES dates back to April of 1991. Since then, more than 4,000 lives have been saved!'. Vigil reports 329 saves so far. Not sure how many MARS has. I have not personally witnessed an AAD fire, but I've talked to a few instructors who have.

I want something I can do some backflying and transitioning in, but I am not an acro flyer. I mostly do simple stuff. Formations, docking, stacks, some basic backflying and transisioning, but that's about it. If the Strix and ATC are more or less the same in terms of performance, I dont think it would make sense for me to buy one. But the Strix does seem to have more surface area than the ATC and so I assumed it would be faster and have more L/D.

How does the Strix compare to the Freak 2? I've been flying the ATC (100 jumps, 250 WS total) and I was considering getting a Freak 2 at some undetermined point in the future, but I have an opportunity to get a good deal on a used Strix. I am just curious how the three compare to each other.

Not really. Most linesets are around $250 plus shipping. A rigger will typically charge $100 to reline the canopy. That brings you to $400 all said and done. It's expensive enough that any canopy being sold with 300 jumps or more and has not been relined yet is in the territory of being a bad deal (except Spectra). Typically, a canopy like that would go for maybe $1700 on an MSRP tag of $2250 or so. However, you basically need a reline as soon as you get it (brakes at the minimal), which means when you factor the cost of the reline you're nearly at the price of a brand new canopy.